Swipely is latest start-up to promote sharing purchases online

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Welcome another start-up interested in telling the world what you buy.

Swipely, which like Blippy lets users link their credit or debit cards and share information about their purchases with friends or the Web at large. It has begun invitation-only testing this week. It wants, it says, to ‘turn purchases into conversations.’

It’s run by Angus Davis, a Netscape and TellMe veteran based in Providence, R.I., who has raised $7.5 million from venture firms Greylock Partners and First Round Capital, and a slew of high-profile angel investors including Ron Conway and former Google executive Chris Sacca. Danny Rimer of Index Ventures will join its board of directors, and Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners will serve as an observer. It had previously raised $1 million from angel investors. Blippy has raised nearly $13 million.

It’s pitching itself as a place where people chat about what they buy, not how much they spend. The idea: ‘to add value to every swipe.’ You choose which purchases to post.

It’s unclear how popular this concept of making purchases more social will be. One of the stumbling blocks is changing attitudes about the privacy of financial information. Swipely says it’s emphasizing security and privacy and has passed reviews and audits. Blippy recently had an unfortunate but quickly repaired security issue.

Speaking of Blippy, it tweeted Tuesday that it will announce some cool stuff when co-founder Philip Kaplan takes the stage at the Finovate conference.

-- Jessica Guynn